In 2007, the European Union mandated fleet average CO2 emissions of 158.7 g/km. For 2015, that figure will drop to 130 g/km, and the target for 2020 is an ambitions 95 g/km. Thanks to some German politicking, that target will be phased in from 2020 to 2024, but it will still apply to 80 percent of passenger cars in that first year. In US miles per gallon, that's the equivalent of going from about 35 mpg to 42 mpg to 57 mpg. The current Volkswagen Golf is rated from 85 g/km of CO2 to 190 g/km dep

Volkswagen is issuing a stop-sale and recall for the 2015 GTI and Golf because of a problem with the front stabilizer link fasteners. The stop-sale covers 705 vehicles at US dealers, and, according to Automotive News an additional 108 cars in Canada. Company spokesperson Jeannine Ginivan also told Autoblog that it's recalling 2,001 examples in the US and 446 in Canada that customers already own to repair the issue.

Contrary to what you may have assumed, the Volkswagen Golf was not named after the sport. Rather, when the car was being developed as the successor to the Beetle, "Golf," which is German for "Gulf," was meant to pay homage to the Gulf Stream, a powerful and swift Atlantic Ocean current.